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Intel Reveals Unlocked, Socketed Broadwell and Core i7 NUC With Iris Graphics
MojoKid writes Intel held an event at a location adjacent to GDC last night, where the company discussed some updates to its 5th Gen Core processor line-up, Intel graphics developments, the Intel Hardware SDK, and its various game developer tools. Chris Silva, Director of Marketing for Premium Notebook and Client Graphics teams disclosed a few details that a socketed, unlocked, 65W desktop processor based on Intel's Broadwell architecture, featuring Iris graphics, is due to arrive sometime in mid-2015. It's noteworthy because this will be Intel's first desktop CPU with Iris Pro graphics and because it is multiplier unlocked. It will be interesting to see what Iris Pro can do with some overclocking. Intel then showed off a new NUC mini PC powered by a 28W, quad-core Core i7 Broadwell processor, which also featured Iris graphics. The device has a tiny .63 liter enclosure with support for high-performance M.2 solid state drives and features an array of built-in IO options, like USB3, BT4, and 802.11ac WiFi. Bryan Langley, Principal PM for Windows Graphics also talked a bit about DirectX 12, disclosing that the company would be ready with DX12 support when Windows 10 arrives and that there are optimizations in DX12 and their drivers that would deliver performance enhancements to current and future Intel graphics platforms.
The NUC systems really are pretty damn nice from a geek perspective. They ship bare. No OS. Install-your-own storage, memory, peripherals. They explicitly support linux and windows. TPM/Secure boot are off by default (But you can enable them if you want/need them)
They're made by Intel and thus have much better build quality and support than even the best taiwanese makers. Particularly when it comes to things like power management. (No 'It boots windows ship it!' shit-pile broken implementations)
They're not /completely/ customizable, but keep in mind what they are. A tiny, VERY low power, system at a reasonable price. There are obvious thermal load and power limitations so you don't get much ability to overclock (Other than the ability to lightly tweak tweak or disable the thermal-throttled asymmetric core clocking scheme intel calls "Turbo Boost", on processors that sport said feature) They're also very tiny systems with limited room inside- Though you do have the abilty to pick your own memory, wifi, and SSD on most models.